Prosperity, Art Bloom In Mountains

October 10, 1991|By Jorge Casuso, Chicago Tribune.

TEJON PASS, CALIF. — Five years ago an eccentric Bulgarian artist named Christo announced he wanted to plant hundreds of umbrellas in the canyons, valleys, roadsides and hills of this stunning mountain pass.

Umbrellas? What for, the people asked. Why would anyone want to spend $26 million on umbrellas when you could use it to build new schools and house the homeless. In this arid climate who needs umbrellas anyway, they joked.

For many residents of this secluded mountain range 80 miles north of Los Angeles, the answer came Wednesday morning as 1,760 umbrellas two stories high popped open and shimmered in a golden bloom.

For 18 miles the highway pass through the Tehachapi Mountains became a giant canvas, as clusters of umbrellas popped up around a bend, wound their way single file up rolling hillsides or sat alone atop a lofty perch.

``I have never been an artsy type of person,`` said Marty Love, who laughed and cried when she drove past the umbrellas. ``But taking God`s creation and adding to it, this to me has value.``

For others, the opened umbrellas still seemed an oddball scheme. It certainly was not art, they said, but it was not totally worthless, either. In fact, it has been something of a boom industry for an area that is hoping for better days economically.

``I still think it`s a little crazy, but there`s always the bottom line,`` said Woody Wilson, who brought his hot dog stand down from

Bakersfield.

In the last few days, real estate signs and concession booths picturing yellow umbrellas have blossomed in parking lots and along the edges of busy roads.

Local newspaper ads featured ``Yellow umbrella`` omelettes, 14K gold double umbrella pins and 24-hour limousine service to ``view the umbrellas without any driving distractions.``

The umbrellas, which will stay up for only three weeks and then be dismantled for good, are expected to lure an estimated 7 million visitors to an area usually viewed from the windows of a car.

``It`ll put us on the map,`` said Jack Hunt, president of Tejon Ranch, whose cattle ranch and farmlands cover an area the size of Los Angeles.

Hunt, who plans to develop some of his ranch, and local real estate agents are hoping that visitors will see a pristine land, just an hour`s drive from the smog and congestion of the San Fernando Valley.

In the weeks before the umbrellas were opened, scores of lots have gone up for sale and asking prices have risen in what has been a slumping housing market, real estate agents say.

Restaurants and bars that do a brisk business only during ski season are swamped with customers.

As with other Christo works, ``The Umbrellas-Joint Project for Japan and USA`` has the charged feeling of an event-a Super Bowl or solar eclipse of the art world.

For months, expectation has been building for what is the most expensive work ever funded by an artist. In addition to the California umbrellas, the project calls for a 12-mile string of 1,340 blue umbrellas that opened in the marshy farmlands of Japan on Wednesday.

The project in Japan, however, lasted only 16 hours before Christo was forced to close the umbrellas because of an approaching typhoon.

The two works, Christo says, contrast and compare the different landscapes and cultures.

``Today we are surrounded by repetitious experiences,`` Christo told an interviewer. ``We need to be confronted with something that happens only once in a lifetime.``

The idea of spending years of work and millions of dollars to wrap a bridge in Paris or surround islands in Miami-two of Christo`s previous projects-may seem like a senseless exercise in a world where people do things only for a reason.

It is the grand-even crazy-dream and the challenge of making it come true against great odds that make Christo`s art so compelling, his followers say.

Supporters, who came from around the world, sleep outdoors and endure cold showers for the sake of art.

``It`s a high,`` said Anne Zimmerman, an architect from Venice, Calif., who used her vacation to come and work on the project. ``It`s almost like you`re in a little dream up here.``

But Christo`s work is not all dream and mystique. It requires a business operation that includes accountants, lawyers, contractors and managers.

Christo himself is a driven, meticulous workaholic, who becomes an expert historian of the landscapes that are his canvases.

He drove 6,000 miles, searching up and down California for the ideal locale for his project. Then he trekked across the 18-mile-long stretch of landscape, spotting the precise location of each umbrella, returning to move them a few yards farther up or down a hill.

Christo`s projects are entirely bankrolled by the sale of his drawings, collages and models, which fetch between $35,000 and $360,000.

``The money, for Christo, is totally irrelevant,`` said Carl Flach, who after Christo`s wife, Jeanne Claude, is the artist`s biggest dealer. ``He`s always in the red. He`s always using the money to finance the next project.``